So that everyone has more to read during their time social distancing, we're making digital copies of every Paleotronic issue available for free! This is issue two, which looks at television and all that it inspired, including Sarnoff and Farnsworth's battle for the cathode-ray tube, John Logie Baird's attempts at mechanical television. early computer displays, video games and much, much more! Also an interview with ZX Spectrum designer Richard Altwasser!
Reviewer:
Eklectic1again
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July 24, 2022 Subject:
Useful, encapsulating a lot of early TV's journey to success as a medium...and other topics
I found this highly visual presentation of ancient tech---TV, in particular---to be very informative. By your showing me numerous pictures of Baird and
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Farnsworth, I can finally incorporate their separate but related stories into memory---just reading about their accomplishments hadn't ever been enough to help me with that. Now I have a way of understanding them as individuals! I love that. I hesitated in giving 5 stars only because the cover of this magazine, and some of the content presentation is wayyyy overly vivid. Blinding. Tasteless. 1980s-like. I almost didn't read further. (But I'm glad I persisted! I love old tech!) Another problem: within the issue, the business of reverse-out typesetting (white printed characters on black) is very tiring on the eyes, and a bad practice in general. Yeah, it looks cool and if you are very young it won't bother you; but get a couple decades older and it really does, and becomes a burden in reading---too much heavy focus work needed by the aging eye to handle so much contrast. So, graphics specialists and publishers of today, I beg you to go for readability over too much coolness. (You can't lose if you tailor it to practical readability...we would love you to listen...just as much as we love you for the trouble you take to create a nuanced and intelligent issue like this, and put it here for us to read.) The overall information load is otherwise quite well managed, and well written, not a small thing these days. Thank you. I enjoyed it!